


Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story

by purplecake



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, And violence, Angst, F/M, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, Romantic relationships will come later, Team Big Three, Thalia Nico and Percy are bros for life, focus on survival and messed up shit first, happiness?, i love them, if i feel nice, mature rating for language, minor and major character deaths will come, mostly cannon ships, slow burn i guess, too much walking dead game has been played, will come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-14 13:42:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9184027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplecake/pseuds/purplecake
Summary: The world has officially gone to shit. The dead are walking, doing nothing but eating the living, and survivors are scarce. After being stranded on top of a caravan by the living dead Annabeth is about to accept defeat, when unexpected help comes in the form of a familiar face, and two mysterious guys on horses.Apocalypse AU with the Heroes of Olympus gang, but miserable and painful. And with a little happiness when I feel like it.NOTE : I made a change. The apocalypse has been going on for five years now, not two.





	1. Surrounded

**Author's Note:**

> So this here is being written because I have spent the past three days playing The Walking Dead Game. And I wanted to write something zombie apocalypse based. And I am also blocked with all my other stories. So Ta DA!! 
> 
> There will be character death, definitely minor and probably major, because this is an apocalypse story, and people die. Injury will be common, angst and emotion. Violence will be a common theme. I don't know how long this is going to be, so for now I set it at 10 chapters. Might be shorter, might be longer, I might even not finish it, but I am going to try my best. : D
> 
> I tried to make it dark and described the gory parts, so be warned. Or at least I tried. 
> 
> ALSO BIG THING is that Percy and the Gang are not teenagers in this one. I made them older for the purpose of this story. It will be said, at some point in form of backstory, but non of them are teens. Around their 20s. 
> 
> Anyway, so long. I hope you enjoy. In the mean time, please criticise my story as much as you wish. It will help me improve it for you. Hope you enjoy. 
> 
> Obviously I don't own Percy Jackson, or Heroes of Olympus. Those belong to Rick Riordan. Also the title of the story is from the Broadway show Hamilton song of the same name.

Day 1870. Five years and 45 days since the sickeness began. 

I guess I feel responsible for her death. I was the one that made a fuss about the shops, the one that made all the noise. All the noise that attracted all those corpses. The ones that took her. And it was over three years now, but I still can't sleep without seeing her falling into their clawing arms. The world officially went to shit 1870 days ago. But it really got darker the day she died. Luke keeps telling me it's not my fault. That I wasn't the one that killed her, but those things. The ones that probably tore her apart, no doubt about it. But I can't stop thinking that if we hadn't been fighting that day when we were suppose to be moving, gathering, watching, then Thalia would still be alive and at my side, teasing Luke and making fun of how seriously I treated every moment, even though we all knew that she agreed with me. But she was gone, and every time I saw one of those things, I was filled with both an anger and a fear for them. How easily they could grab and kill, even though their muscles were rotten. How desperate they were to sink their black teeth into fresh skin. There eyes were blank and milky, but they saw every movement. Their ears were chewed off or peeling from their skulls from years of rotting, but they heard every sound we made. 

I guess I write to have some sort of guarantee that what happened here won't be lost. To document what happens to us. To have something to cling to, something that proves what happened, the things we've been through, that they actually happened. That it wasn't in vain and for nothing. 

In the end I realised that despite the fact that I try to document our suffering for the history of others, we have no control over who lives, who dies and who tells our story. But what if there's no one left alive to tell it?

 

Annabeth looked up from the crumpled pages of her notebook, splattered with dirt and blood, ripped and ruined. Tired out, just like they all were. She watched the herd of dead clawing their way through the metal body of the car across the street, hands reaching in through the smashed window, rotten skin ripped apart by shards of left over glass. Not that they were bothered by it. The smell was horrible, even from where she was hidden behind the wooden dresser, tipped over on it's side to make up for a barricade they'd made. It was one of the many things she could never get used to. The smell. Luke made fun of her in the less tense moments, but she could see the way he kept in gags when ever they found them. The dead beyond the barricade barely payed attention to them anyway. Nothing could drag their milky eyes or snapping teeth from the sight of blood. 

A whistle went up behind her, and she watched wearily for a second as one of the monsters raised its grey skinned head and bared it's teeth their way, but it didn't look back for longer than a second before a wet sound of blood and ripping skin swivelled it's attention away. Annabeth turned to Luke with a hard glare, but his grin and the bag in his hand quickly snuffed it out, a smile filling it's place instead. She crept away from the barricade shifted the knife back to it's sheath at her thigh before shoving Luke, as silently as she could, towards the door of the caravan. A wreck of peeling walls and rusted hinges, but a place they'd called home for almost two months now. The longest they'd stayed in one place so far. Luke began to laugh as soon as Annabeth sneaked the door shut, eyes crinkled and mouth in an open grin. Annabeth shushed him but the smile on her face never even wavered. 

"Sorry, sorry, but the anger on your face when you turned! I thought you would come up and stab me." 

She walked towards him with a smile, then slammed the peeling notebook hard into his arm, to which he hissed and clutched at the muscle with gloved fingers, but the laugh rumbled from his throat the next second anyway. She rolled her eyes at that, and waved around to get his attention. "Okay, okay. What did you get?"

The supplies were pretty basic. Water, bottled, which Annabeth took immediately and placed in one of the large duffel bags that held all their supplies, just in case they had to make a quick get away. Four tins of beans were next, and even though they both grimaced at eating beans again for the last six months, they thanked the world there was anything left. Annabeth had already sat at one of the ripped stools by the small kitchen counter when Luke grinned wide. 

"Now hold on a second." He stuck his hand deep to the bottom of the bag, and Annabeth heard the crinkling of a plastic wrapper. "That's not everything." And out of the bag, he pulled a box of chocolate chip cookies, perfectly closed and sitting in his palm. He watched with a twinkle of joy in his eye as Annabeth laughed, approaching slowly to take the bag. 

She looked up at him with a shocked smile. "Holy shit." The packet crunched in her hands as she took it, and she laughed. "Are these real?" 

Luke grinned. "I god damn hope they are! Almost got chomped for them!" 

A glare came at him for the admission, but Annabeth was too distracted, ripping open the packet and offering one of the cookies to Luke before carefully taking one herself. Crumbs came off in her hands, but she didn't mind. "God, I haven't seen one of these since it started." The blonde at her side knocked his cookie against the one in her hand gently, with a silent cheers. He would have shouted it, if not for the violent point of Annabeth's finger towards the feeding dead outside their window. Then, he bit into it, and Annabeth followed. As soon as she tasted the first bite, she began to laugh, at the amazing taste of melting chocolate and crunching cookie. 

She was happy in that moment, happy with the world for the first time in years for giving them something good, even if it was this small and meaningless. But the world had a funny way of working, and just as Annabeth was about to take another bite of the cookie, a blood freezing screaming erupted through the air from outside. The shock froze her hand, and both pack and the cookie in her hands fell to the caked floor of the caravan to crumble against the ground in an explosion of crumbs. 

After the scream, the silence and peace around them collapsed immediately.

The distracted rotten bodies outside lifted their heads to stare across the street at the caravan that Luke and Annabeth stood in, staring at the corpses through the window misty with dirt, and neither of them knew why until an urgent banging shook their door. 

"Hello!" The voice was shaking, dunked in fear and agony. "Please, anyone, help me. Help, me." 

Annabeth was quick to pull free her knife and leap for the door, to try and help, but Luke grabbed her quickly by the arm and pulled her back by the material of her hoodie before she could get any closer. She was ready to pull and fight, angry that he'd stopped her, until she heard what he wanted her to. The dragging and heavy footsteps just before the screaming started again, only louder and coated with terror. A red puddle streamed under the door and seeped into the ripped carpet of the floor, leaving a deep stain of red over the old brown blood that had already dried there years ago. With wide eyes, Annabeth watched the puddle expand, and a cough ripped from the strangers throat as a heavy weight hit the door, then hit the creaking wooden patio of the caravan. A wet gurgle reached their ears from outside, a disgusting sound they knew to be them chewing, but both of them just stood in silence, waiting. 

Waiting, at least, until the banging started up outside the door again, but not followed this time by shaking human words, but by the hungry wet growling of the walking dead. 

That started them up, and Luke was rushing to the counter, diving under quickly to pull out the two bags of supplies that Annabeth had just hidden food and water in. As he heaved them over his shoulders, Annabeth pulled out her knife, light in her hand from familiarity, staring hard at the door that now rattled dangerously on its hinges, brown from rust. 

"Come on! We gotta go!" His shout was desperate, but he stopped at one of the windows next to the back door, and what he saw outside was enough to send the blood running from his face, leaving it sickly and pale with worry and fear. Annabeth dropped the wooden bookcase by the door to the side to cover the breaking door, before racing to Luke's side. 

"What? What is it?" She didn't get a response, and she didn't need one. Her grey eyes scanned the space outside the window and her stomach dropped heavily to her feet with terror building in her chest. Dozens of rotting faces stared back at them, all pushing at the other with sharp nails and ruined hands, just to get towards them. When they saw their pale faces staring out from the window, the dead went wild, throwing themselves forward hard enough to rattle the whole caravan. They were surrounded, by rows and rows of corpses on each side, each door blocked, each window crowded by hands that hungered to rip away their skin and eat their flesh. Annabeth felt a dread settle in her chest, with the fear. It made her legs shake, her fingers twitch. Luke looked barely responsive, and Annabeth almost cried at the defeated sight flooding his normally positive eyes. 

"There's no way out."

For a second they were silent. Just staring at the hands clawing over glass, smearing brown rotten blood over the windows. Then the door rattled, and Annabeth sprang into action, grabbing one of the bags from Luke and then his arm. The sky light above their heads was locked, but she shoved Luke with as much strenght as she could muster towards the shelves in the corner, and yelled at him to push as she pulled at the wood from the other side, to stand them up under the sky light. Luke stood still by the shelves, empty eyes staring into the sea of dead literally outside their window. 

"Luke!" He didn't react. The door rattled harder. They didn't have time. Annabeth grabbed him hard by the shoulders and shoved. When the hard edge of the shelves connected with his back, he hissed and blinked, as if only now realising where he was. 

"Right." And then he was pulling free his gun from his belt and pointing it at the door. Fleshy hands reached in through the gap made in the beaten door, the hinges loose and breaking. "Go, open the sky light. I'll hold them off, but be quick." And then he was pulling the trigger, bullets flying and ripping away at the faces that managed to squeeze through the crumbled door. 

Annabeth pulled herself up the shelf, face inches from the window. She pushed the at the hatch at first, but with a frustrated cry as the dead broke through, she punched and hit it with a closed fist. The hatch only pushed back not even quivering it it's rusted prison, and Annabeth's hand came away red and pulsing. She tried to knock the glass hard with the butt of her knife, but it was too thick. Nothing. Luke yelled up to her in alarm, the gun in his hand now clicking uselessly when he pulled the trigger, and more gnashing jaws showed in the door, bloodied fingers pushing it further open. As a last hopeful act, a last resort, Annabeth fitted the blade of her knife into the gap between the hatch and the caravan wall and pushed as hard as she could, until her palms were raw and her jaw aching from having it clenched so hard. But the hatch snapped open a second later, the tip of the knife coming off and flying up as the hatch bounced open, but Annabeth let out a gleeful shout which had Luke scrambling up the shelves just as the dead beat the door off it's hinges. 

"Go, go, go!" The shout was as noticible as a whisper in all the groans and shatters as the corpses rushed them, but Annabeth understood Luke's desperate expression, kneeling on one knee and waving her towards him with a frantic glint in his eyes, the dead clawing their fingers towards her back. She stood steadily on his knee, grabbed onto the creaking roof above their heads and strained her arms. Once she was up, laying down with her stomach pressed against a filthy roof, she leaned her arms back down into the caravan for Luke to grab onto. Her arms burned, and her shoulders clicked painfully with his weight, but she pulled as hard as she could until he was lying on the top of the caravan next to her, both of them breathing heavily with relief. 

They stared up at the cloudless sky, the sun blinding but welcoming, because they were alive. 

Luke began to laugh, shoulders shaking at her side. He shuffled up to his feet with the rumble of relief and happiness only spreading into his laughing. Annabeth gazed up at the blue sky, and for the first time in years she truely appreciated it's warmth and colours. 

"Well, that was something!" Luke yelled, glancing over the edge to the crowd of remaining biters left clawing at the side of the caravan, their skin ripping and leaving bloodied stains on the crumbling once white walls. "They're going inside, clearing the sides, we can-" 

They were happy too quickly about their success. 

The corpses from the other side of the caravan pushed violently against it's walls, sending the vehicle rocking to the side with the force of the desperate shove. Annabeth braced herself against the hatch they'd came through. 

Luke wasn't so lucky. 

His head was still over the side of the roof, looking down into the herd still gathered below on one side when the lurch of the caravan had him stumbling backwards over the side and diving into the waiting teeth of the dead. He didn't have time for the relieved smile on his face to transform into shock before he was swallowed by the sea of rotting bodies. 

Annabeth screamed, but her ears picked up an echoing nothing, as if she was underwater. Her hands ran cold as blood seemed to seep away from her, and with numb fingers she let go of the roof just as the caravan bounced back into its straight position. Moving to her knees, Annabeth pulled herself, weak with the sorrow already taking over the dulled light of hope in her heart. She bent over the edge and looked below to see the dead dropping their heads and reaching their arms to a flailing body collapsed into the centre of their hord. Luke's scream rang in her ears, and she yelled his name, reached out a hand, even pulled out her knife, but he was gone beneath bodies peeling of flesh and bleeding rotting blood, and she was too high to reach any of them. 

Her tears reached the end of her face and dropped onto the ruined flesh of the dead below. 

With a new kind of tiredness, one deep and heavier than any she'd ever felt, settled over her chest, and she fell back to the creaking metal under her as tears poured thickly over her cheeks. 

A lot of time passed, the sun rose higher at noon and fell past the horizon, sending the world into darkness, except by the light of the moon that was a prefect dish in the star full void above her, but Annabeth lay with her fingers clamped tight into her palms and eyes squeezed shut. Her tears had long dried, leaving only an emptiness in her heart where Luke's happiness had filled it before. Another one of her longest friends gone. 

The corpses had as long lost interest. Guess they world was cruel enough to take her friends, her family, but leave her stranded to stare under the watchful eye of the dead. But they didn't watch. They just wandered around underneath, spread thin now after they'd finished their meal. Annabeth couldn't bring herself to look over the edge, to see the mangled form of her friend beaten into the dried ground, so she closed her eyes again and listened to the dead drag their feet below inside the caravan that she'd been laughing in only hours ago with Luke, who now lay in pieces below, unless they'd dragged his body away to eat elsewhere. 

Still, she didn't look. And then, between the shuffling and the moans, and the sound of moving rotten flesh, came a sharp whistle. 

At first Annabeth thought she'd misheard, scrunched her eyes closed tighter and unfolded her hands to press them over her eyes. 

When it came again though, it was closer, and Annabeth sat up suddenly in time to see the few corpses on the right of the caravan turn their weak necks in the direction it had come from, up hill that led to a wide forest, casting shadows long and wide in the moon's light. Their breaking knees had them stumbling towards a low bang as if metal on metal from the same direction as the whistle. 

It was minutes until the caravan was clear of dead, but only seconds until a sound of leather and hooves met her ears, stopping suddenly at the caravan's side. She was too scared to look over the edge, so she just waited. 

A flicker of movement bounced in her peripheral vision, looking like two mounted horse, but the noise of light feet over old walls of the caravan had Annabeth frozen, staring at the head popping up over the side. Black eyes stared at her from and olive skinned face. The man was tall and wearing black, and in the night's shadows Annabeth had to squint to see that he held a hand gun in a finger-less gloved hand, barrel turned to point straight at her. His eyes didn't waver from under the mop of his mess black hair. His free hand reached down over the edge of the roof and clicked at something Annabeth quickly realised was a flahslight in a clear sequence of flashes. A signal, which was quickly followed by more sounds of hooves and then once again feet, climbing. 

Two more strangers broke onto the roof, only this time, not both of them were strangers to Annabeth. Her stomach dropped and the tears from her loss of Luke returned once again to her eyes, filling them until she could barely see the face she'd thought she could never see again. 

Her hair was laid across her head without the gel that kept it spiked before, Thalia stared at her from under a falling fringe, electric eyes wide with shock. 

"Annabeth?" It had been a year at least, but her voice was still the same, the smile that broke over her cheeks too.

In the shock of seeing Thalia, Annabeth didn't see the green eyed man behind her friend also trail a gun on her still form. With a laugh, Thalia lay a soft hand over both guns and pushed them down to point at the floor. Both men shared a pointed look of confusion, but said nothing. 

"How the hell are you alive?" 

Thalia opened to answer, shuffling closer on her feet, leaning a hand down to Annabeth, but she never got the chance to answer. 

The green eyed man from behind called their attention with a cough, then pointed towards the herd they'd must over scared off to get up here, stumbling back towards them. 

"We better get going, if we want to live." 

Thalia rolled her eyes and gave Annabeth a smile as she pulled her to her feet and steadied her by the shoulders when she almost fell back down. "Don't be so dramatic Perce." 

'Perce' grumbled and slipped off the roof to land steadily on his feet below, sending up a cloud of dust. The other man followed with an awkward smile. Thalia grinned. "Percy's a drama queen, but he's also right. It's better not to get surrounded." And then they were moving, swinging down from the roof and face to face with a heavy breathing long faced beast. Thalia hurried her onto the horse's back before getting on behind her. 

With a kick of her heel they were off, with the two men leading. 

Annabeth turned her head, grey eyes staring at the caravan that had been her home and at the earth around it, that would now only be Luke's burial ground. Maybe it was the wind whipping at her face, or the death of her friend, or finding one alive, but tears dripped and were carried by the wild waves of wind before they could even hit her cheeks. 

The moon dipped ahead of them, and an glowing sun rose from behind, three shadows of running bodies cast in the dirt that the horses dented with their hooves.


	2. Welcomed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annabeth is brought back to a safe place with Thalia. She meets the rest of the gang.

They rode for what felt to Annabeth like hours, but looking up at the still climbing sun before them, she knew it had only been minutes. A building rose ahead, shrouded by the orange glow of dawn. The structure was nothing special, but it was the rounding wall leading around it that had Annabeth fascinated. It was wide, and made of layered cars, she noticed as they got closer. A jagged grate of steel sat between two large truck heads, and the heavy chains on the one side told Annabeth it was used as a gate. 

A slumped figure sat atop one of the cars with a rifle settled between their legs, slumped back with their head hanging. As they stopped under the gate, Annabeth saw it was a man, his legs spread out, fingers gripping the tip of his gun and mouth wide open mid-snore. A curly mess of black hair flopped over his eyes, and soft stubble spread over his cheeks and jaw. 

Thalia laughed silently under her breath when she caught sight of him, but the men at their side didn't crack even the slightest smile. The one Thalia had called Percy bound up to the gate, after his green eyes had searched the land for danger, and hammered the butt of his gun hard into the grate that was the entrance. An echo of metal was loud, and the man on top of the cars almost rolled off the hood he slept on in his sudden scrambling before he grabbed onto the side of the gate and steadied himself. Curious eyes looked down to the ground. They widened immediately, and a guilty expression wiped across his face at the sight of Percy standing below, glaring at him from under the shadows of the wall of cars. 

"Hey, Percy!" His eyes avoided direct contact, and turned instead to the man at Percy's side, who gave an awkward peace sign as a greeting. "Nico, looking good." He turned his eyes, which were a warm brown in the growing light of the sun, finally to Thalia. "You're not angry at me too much though, right guys?"

Thalia glanced towards her green eyed friend, who hadn't stopped glaring, and smiled back up at the man again. "Not sure about Perseus and the son of death over there, but no, I'm not angry at you Leo." 

"Not angry!" Percy boomed, throwing his arms up. "You fell asleep again! Do you remember what happened last time that happened?" 

Annabeth's ears buzzed with the silence, apart from the arguing, and suspicious of it she turned her head to stare behind them. 

About a hundred metres behind the horses, three corpses waddled their way. Two of them had their arms outstretched, ready to reach and tear at flesh, spill blood. The last of them had tendrils of veins and muscle left for legs, the bones snapped and left jagged at the knew. Brown tracks were left behind it as it used it's hands to dig it's fingers into the dry land and drag itself towards fresh prey. Nico must have noticed, because the silent man interrupted Percy's angry scolding with a frown on his face, eyes staring past to the dead. 

"We got incoming." His voice was deeper than Annabeth had expected, which led her to realise that she had no idea how old they were. The olive skinned man, Nico, looked young, but his face was streaked with a certain look of agony she was sure she had in her eyes now too. One that came with loss. Percy was sagging with an invisible weight of reliability. She'd seen it before, at the start, on Luke. And the man on the gate, the guilt of past failure dragged him towards sleepless nights, from the dark splodges and dropping eyes. 

Percy turned back at Nico's announcement, barely saying anything accept letting out a gruff acknowledgement and heading towards his horse. He pulled something long from the side of his saddle with a hissing sound of cutting leather, and began making his way to the stumbling dead now only fifty metres away. She didn't realise what it was for a second, until the blade winked in the sunlight, and Percy twirled his sword swiftly in his fingers. Thalia patted Annabeth on the shoulder, smiled at her when she got a look of confusion, and then made eye contact with Nico. "Take Annabeth inside, let her meet everyone." Nico took the first steps towards Annabeth as Thalia turned away to follow after her green eyed friend. "I'll make sure our kelp for brains doesn't get himself killed." Annabeth moved to argue, to say anything to stop her. A flash of memory flickered at the back of her mind, of Thalia's face disappearing through the cracking glass of the roof, into the band of dead reaching below. Before she could take off after her friend, Nico was there with a hand pressing at her shoulder comfortingly. 

"Don't worry. We've been fighting together a long time now, and we work together better than anyone. Those two are like psychic." His smile was weighed down by a deep sadness, but it was infectious, and when the man above the gate, 'Leo' Annabeth recalled Thalia say, she followed the dark haired man through. She glanced back in time to see Thalia catch the sword Percy'd thrown her and slice the head clean off the corpses shoulders as Percy cracked apart the crawlers rotten skull. Then they were dropping the last and lazily walking back, grabbing their horses along the way. Leo swerved the gate shut as soon as they slipped through. Just before they entered through the bordered doors to the house, Annabeth saw Percy nudge Leo with a shoulder, and then punch him hard in the arm with a smile. 

The house was brick walls and patches of wood. It wasn't old or crumbling, but it sagged with improvements and repairs. I pillar of smoke rose from a thin chimney between the planks of the roof, and Annabeth watched it for a second with amazement. "You have heat?"

Thalia, who'd walked up to walk next to her, laughed at the amazement in her voice, found the smoke as it blended into the sky and nodded. But it was Percy that answered, from the back where he walked between Nico and Leo. When she turned to look at him, she saw the turn up of his lips as he fought a smile at her excited eyes. 

"We have a generator that we turn on twice a week, for hot water, heat, those things." Annabeth tried to not show it, but she was shocked at the answer, and the detail of it. Percy hadn't exactly been very talkative, especially with her. But she took the answer happily and smiled, staring back up to the cloud rising above the roof, feeling a wave of relief settle in her heart. 

They stopped at a door seconds later, which Annabeth guessed led to inside the house. Which wasn't too big, but the closer she got the sturdier the walls seemed, the safer it felt to her. On closer inspection, she saw plates of shining metal settled behind the patched slabs of old wood. "Drilled in to fortify the place in case the wall gave way," Leo explained. Annabeth heard the pride in his voice clearly, and even though Thalia answered with an explanation, Annabeth had already figured out that it was Leo's doing. 

With a smile of his own, and a playful salute, Leo made his way passed Thalia and Annabeth and knocked firmly on the thick wood that was the door, flakes of old paint twirling to the cobblestone steps under at the force of his hand. It was three quick taps, followed by two slower ones. A code, Annabeth realised. Similar to the one Nico had used with the flashlight when they rescued her from the roof of the caravan. It took only seconds for rumbling to come from the slab of door. 

It shook as it was pulled back, and from the opening that was pushed apart, the nuzzle of a gun poked free, pointed steadily at them. A dark eye peeked from inside. Percy waved from the back of the group. "It's alright Frank. It's safe." 

As soon as this 'Frank' registered Percy's voice, the gun dropped from the gap. Annabeth heard another shriek of metal, before the door was pushed open fully, and a figure stood under the arch with a smile on his smooth face. He was a huge buff man, this Frank, with arms three times the size of Annabeth's thin twigs. She imagined he crushed the backs of corpses over his muscled knees. But in any way that he might have been seen as dangerous was quickly snuffed out by the immediate warmth of his light smile, brightening the eyes that had studied them only seconds ago, and lifting his high cheeks even higher. He waved them in and was shutting the door quickly behind them before he even saw Annabeth. The blonde tried her best at her smile, but the image of Luke's falling body was imprinted into the air around them, so she managed a nod. 

"Frank, this is my friend, Annabeth Chase." A slice of recognition passed through his eyes when Thalia said her name, and he held out a huge hand to shake her own. From his widening grin (was that even possible?), Annabeth figured out Thalia had talked about her before, which made her feel a sense of warmth in her grieving heart. Both their hands were matted with dirt, so Annabeth reached forward with the intention of a firm grip, but what ended up as a lousy shake. "Annabeth, Frank Zhang." Frank's face only got brighter. It amazed her that someone still kept that sense of happiness in such horrid times. 

"Glad to meet someone not trying to bite at my face. Welcome!" And then he was turning and clapping Leo and Percy hard on the shoulders, with a smile to Nico who waved at the large man from the back of the group, by the door, where Annabeth noticed an arrangement of relatively roughed up coats at a set of hangers. 

She turned her question to Thalia, ("How many people do you have here?") but her friend had already followed her line of sight and didn't let her get out the full sentence before she was answering. 

Frank pushed ahead into the house, and they all followed behind him. "Of those that you haven't met, five. In total ten." Annabeth nodded, but didn't say anything else. Her eyes traced the detail of the house. 

It was a tall place, the corridor reaching up to look up to the roof with walls spreading off to either side, opening into rooms. A rusted stair case stood to the left as they passed, but Percy quickly told her they don't go up there, too risky in case they fell through the moulded wood. She saw the corridor blocked with odd bits of ruined furniture a second later. Arches were all that was left of missing doors, and as they passed under a wide one, must have been for a double door, Annabeth felt a cloud of heat hit her, wrapping round her like a blanket. She heard the others behind her sigh in content, and even her own shoulders dropped the tension mended into the bones. They walked into a wide living room, where a worn leather couch stood in the corner, directly in front of a thick glass coffee table that was splattered with old stains. A circular print on its surface marked the spot that the TV had stood probably years ago now. 

An open kitchen sat past the couch. There was no wall to separate the rooms, at least not anymore, but the jagged hanging clumps of plaster that stuck short from the ceiling were evidence enough. 

There wasn't much in the kitchen. If there was a fridge, it had been no help without power, so they'd taken it somewhere it could help. Annabeth had seen it among the other useless furniture blocking the upstairs above the rotting stairs. A sink had been cleaned out and filled with the cleanest water Annabeth'd seen for years outside of a water bottle. It was then she remembered her own bag of supplies, but a look to Nico and she noticed the duffel bag in his hands. He gave her a shy smile when he saw her staring at the bag, lifting a hand to show a thumbs-up. 

 

A shout went up ahead. Annabeth's heart jumped in fear, fingers tense and skimming the sheath of her chipped knife at her belt, but she relaxed quickly enough when she saw the source of it. Five figures had been spread across the old living room, two sitting lazily on the leather couch, one at the fire place that was settled into the corner, poking at the wood with a metal rode, the flames growing. The one that had screamed was an older woman with dark hair and eyes stood at one of the boarded house windows, with a greying man of about the woman's age at her shoulder. Her eyes were wide and staring towards them, right at Annabeth. 

No, she thought. Not at her. Percy was smiling, eyes alight with a spark of happiness as he watched the woman approach with quick steps. The floor under even her light taps creaked with age. She threw her arms around his shoulders, but he was so tall that she had to pull him down to bend over crookedly so she could hug him properly. Percy responded quickly with a similar gesture. "I'm okay, mom. I'm alright," Annabeth heard him repeat from where he had buried his face in her faded cardigan. Thalia came up to her side, patting Percy's mom on the shoulder softly as she went by. The older woman opened her eyes to smile warmly at Thalia. When she pulled away from her son, and Percy had shaken hands with the man besides his mother, both of them turned to greet her. 

"Annabeth Chase." She introduced herself, and held a hand out to the woman first. She pushed it aside immediately and hugged her the same way she had her son, and laughed when she'd pulled away. 

"Sally Jackson." The man shook her hand instead. 

"Paul Blofis." She didn't question his name, although she'd wanted to confirm what she'd heard. Instead she just tried for a smile and answered with a, "Hello."

Thalia was at her side again, Percy at her other. Nico came up, and said quickly from behind that he would place her bag in the kitchen until she decided what she'd do with it. He was back quickly, settled at Percy's side, giving his friend a small squeeze to the shoulder. Annabeth saw the three remaining people heading their way as Thalia led them towards the couch. The first two she was introduced to was a blonde man, a scare across his top lip, and a girl of darker skin and ever changing colour and pattern. 

"So," the man started with a smile. He lifted an arm and shook hands with Percy, who smiled back. "Who's this?" A girl drew up to join them from where she'd been tending to the fire, dark skin and wild hair, curled and messy but somehow still beautiful. Frank was with her, with an arm settled gently around her shoulders. Thalia noticed Annabeth's anxious side glance, and spoke up instead. 

"This is Annabeth Chase." 

A sense of recognition passed over the group surrounding her. The blonde smiled. "THE Annabeth?" When Thalia nodded, a grin twisting her lips, he held out a hand. "Jason. I'm glad she found you." She thanked him rather awkwardly, and wondered how much Thalia had talked about her. How much she had wanted to come find her. What had kept her from finding them? For a second, a stab of pain stroked over her heart when she said "them", for Luke. And then she was blinking, look into ever changing eyes. The girl smiled. "Piper. Thalia had told us a lot about you." The last to introduce herself was the wild haired girl, but her warm hands clapped tightly yet comfortably around Annabeth's and she laughed, actually genially laughed. Even with only minutes around them, she could see that Frank and this girl were perfect from each other. Both filled with enough hope to return even a fragment of happiness to everyone left in the world. "I'm Hazel. It's nice to see a new face around here. We're glad you're here!" 

A call went up them from the back, from the half-ed kitchen. Sally was stood over a steaming bowl. "Come on then, let's eat." Only then did Annabeth feel the serious hunger that she'd endured since the caravan. But-

She grabbed Thalia by the arm as the rest of the group moved for a share of dinner, stopping her on her route to do the same. Her friend turned with a smile, but it flickered out as soon as she saw the anguish suffocating her, through her eyes that filled with misery. She nodded her head, as if she knew. And then she wondered away and through the door arch, into the corridor and onto the first steps of the rotting stairs, with Annabeth hovering beside her the whole way. When Thalia sat, she sat with her, with a drowning feeling in her chest, dread at what she had to say, what she had to relive. But Thalia deserved, had to know.

And so she began with the caravan, but tears had already managed to choke her.


End file.
